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Thoughts

I loved this video essay by Tony Zhou about Chuck Jones, the genius behind many of the Looney Tunes cartoons. I absolutely love the classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts. New ones are still being made but sadly, they fall quite short of the mark set by the original ones made in the 40s, 50s and 60s. This video will help you understand the disciplined artistry that took place behind the scenes in order to create those beautiful cartoons.

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Back when Apple came out with white keyboards, I was annoyed. I appreciated the white aesthetic, the clean design, but they got dirty so quickly. Within a few weeks of normal use with clean hands, there was a visible layer of grime on the keys used most. It was like a heat map drawn with dirt. Yuck. I wash my hands every time I go to the bathroom, so that’s 7-8 times a day or more, and my keyboards still get dirty.

I found myself cleaning my keyboards often, and every time I did it, I asked myself two questions. I kept repeating them like a mantra, annoyed with the amount of time I was spending doing menial stuff:

How could so much grime collect on my keyboards?

Why didn’t they make black keyboards?

Of course, the answer was staring me in the face, every time I used my keyboard. See this and this. Keyboards and mice are breeding grounds for all kinds of nasty bacteria. And because most of them are black, we don’t see how dirty they are and we don’t clean them often, although we should. I bet that’s exactly why they went with white (beside the fact that their design kick at the time involved a lot of white and silver). They wanted to give us a simple visual reminder of the state of our keyboards and make us clean them, lest we look filthy to our families, friends and co-workers. It was a bit of a pill to swallow, but it was (and is) for our own good.

In recent times, Apple has gone to black keyboards on their laptops. Rumor has it they’re also going to make black keyboards for their desktops. While I get the practicality of it, I can’t help thinking people are going to just let the filth accumulate on their keys now that the stark visual reminder is gone. Let’s face it, we’re all so damned busy these days (mostly with drivel) that we’re going to forget to clean our keyboards. We won’t do it until they’re sticky, and by that point… yuck.

Just in case you’re wondering how I clean my keyboards, I typically use Q-tips dipped in rubbing alcohol, they work great. In the past, I also came up with more inventive ways to clean them, such as putting the keys in the dishwasher. That method doesn’t work so well with the newer Bluetooth keyboards, it’ll cook the circuitry, because there’s no way to remove the keys unless you pry the case open.

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There’s an interesting article linked below that talks about the internet of things and the potential for net negative power consumption after more and more devices go online. I’m not going to get into a discussion about the significant potential for hacking these devices and the need to constantly update their firmware, because that’s a great big subject. What I want to talk about is online cameras and power consumption. The quote that got me started is this:

Hölzle acknowledges that his prediction comes with a caveat: the proliferation of online cameras—which send so much data across the network—may cause a steep rise in power consumption across the world’s data centers. “Video is the one exception,” he said on Tuesday.

Of course online cameras eat up a lot of power across data centers, even though they shouldn’t. It’s because every one of the camera makers opts for the easy setup that involves the cloud and the possibility of extra revenues in the form of monthly fees instead of offering the possibility of a straightforward home setup, where the cameras are made accessible through the owner’s firewall.

When that happens, when you can access your home cameras directly through your firewall from your laptop, tablet or phone, you cut out the cloud and the extra power consumption. It’s a little more difficult to do but it’s the right thing to do if you want to reduce power usage, particularly when a lot of firewall/router makers (such as Dlink) also make network video cameras. Surely they can streamline the process of setting them up through their own firewalls and making them available to the owners. Dynamic DNS is the one part of the equation that’s still a bit difficult but I’m of the opinion that each firewall/router maker should run their own DDNS service, just like they already run their own time servers. (DDNS is important because your IP address changes often with some ISPs, making it fairly impossible to get at your firewall simply by bookmarking your external IP address.)

There is another aspect of this that’s worth mentioning. Cloud-based setup and administration of network video cameras becomes a worthwhile proposition when these companies offer subscription-based archival of the video footage. If the cost is reasonable, where you can archive say, eight video cameras for $20-30/month and then be able to search that footage for motion, vloss and audio markers, then it’s worth getting. When a knowledgeable thief breaks into your house, if he sees you’ve got video cameras, he’ll often rip out the DVR and take it with them (if they can find it). When the video is stored in the cloud, they can’t rip anything out, you’ll still have the proof, and that’s a very good thing.

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It’s been snowing today. I woke up to little snowflakes dancing in a light wind in our courtyard. It’s been like that all day. Every time I looked out the window, it put a smile on my face.

There’s something so beautiful about a February snowfall. It’s one of winter’s last few efforts before it gives way to spring. This sort of snow doesn’t ice up the roads. The weather isn’t so cold that it’s unbearable. It’s not like the frosts of early January that put icicles in your marrow should you stay outside too long. This is soft, warm snow that blankets the gardens and the patches of grass, sits every so gingerly on the branches of the trees and nestles inbetween the needles of the evergreens.

It’s like winter’s saying, “It’s been fun this season, I really enjoyed your company. Here’s a parting gift to remember me during the warm seasons.” I love this sort of snow. I love winter. I love a crackling fire in the fireplace, a warm cup of coffee or tea in my hand and the dance of snowflakes outside my window. These sorts of experiences are the high points in our busy lives, and we should enjoy them more.

Well, a blond little girl named Sophie is tugging at my sleeve, I guess it’s time to go.

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Just wanted to publish here a post I wrote on Facebook this morning about body image and the recent controversy surrounding its representation in the media:

Something I don’t get: people are making such a big deal in recent times about being thin and how the fashion magazines are promoting it. They’re making it into a huge issue, as if the plump girls are being persecuted and they’re putting it as if this has been going on forever.

Truth is, this is only a recent thing. Until the 60s, it was a plump girl’s world. Yes, all the way from antiquity to the 1960s or so, people liked bigger women. The thin ones were the outcasts. Nobody wanted them because they were too skinny. They were told to put on weight. There were ads in magazines everywhere for fattening creams and lotions and vitamins and lard and all kinds of stuff to help girls put on weight fast and become “attractive”.

So here’s what I think: all this bulls**t be damned, if you want to be plump, be plump, if you want to be thin, be thin, but do yourself a favor and stop blaming others for your body type. If you’re plump and you’d rather be thin, stop complaining about fashion magazines and learn to love yourself. If you’re thin and would rather be fat, well then, you’re in luck because there are a ton of processed foods out there to help you achieve your goal.

And if you like yourself just the way you are, congratulations! You’re one of the lucky few who get what it’s like to enjoy life. Go on enjoying it, we typically only get 70-80 years of it and we shouldn’t waste it complaining! :-)

Around 4 pm, the water company turned off the water for the entire city due to emergency repairs. Late at night, they turned it back on but it was full of silt and mud, so we let the faucets run to clear the pipes. I went back to my work and Ligia took Sophie to bed.

About an hour later, I got up from my desk and went to see if the water was clear enough to take a shower. To my surprise, the entire kitchen was flooded with about 1-2 cm of water. The kitchen sink had run over. There I was at 11:15 at night, faced with having to mop up all that water when all I wanted to do was to take a shower and hit the sack.

I got the mop and the bucket and got to work, grumbling to myself about the water company and the sink and the pipes and the dirty water and my luck.

A few minutes later, Sasha (one of our cats) came into the kitchen, stepped right onto the wet floor (you know cats, they avoid water) and started looking at me. She even drank some of it.

As I looked at her, I was suddenly reminded of one of my favorite cartoons featuring Tom and Jerry, entitled “Mice Follies”, released in 1954. In it, Jerry and Nibbles (his nephew) flooded the kitchen and froze it with the aid of the refrigerator in order to create a skating rink. Tom naturally pursued them, leading to lots of pratfalls, pranks and laughter.

That wonderful memory of a wonderful cartoon was enough to wipe the slate clean for me. All of a sudden, a late-night disaster was an opportunity to enjoy the moment. My attitude toward it changed completely and I began to enjoy mopping up all that water. I half expected Jerry and Nibbles to tiptoe into the kitchen holding a couple of refrigerator wires in hand, ready to freeze it.

It took about 45 minutes to get all the water mopped up. All of the cats joined me by the end, entranced by the circular movements of the mop through the water. I even started a roaring fire in the kitchen stove to keep me company. I had a blast and went to bed with a smile on my face.

Isn’t it amazing how differently we can perceive the same event if our attitude toward it changes? We can complain and grumble or we can smile and enjoy ourselves thoroughly doing the very same thing. And of course it helps if we also love Tom and Jerry cartoons!